A New York judge has ordered The New York Times to return confidential legal memos it obtained between Project Veritas , an investigative journalism organization, and the …
A New York judge has ordered The New York Times to return confidential legal memos it obtained between Project Veritas, an investigative journalism organization, and the group’s lawyer. The New York Times had obtained the memos that were prepared by Project Veritas attorney Benjamin Barr—it remains unclear how the memos were obtained. The outlet then published the documents online. It later took them down, but an article published Nov.11 describing the memos was still available on the paper’s website. The memos, in part, contained advice from Barr as to how Project Veritas’s methods of reporting, which largely involves reporters going undercover, could avoid running into legal problems. Project Veritas sued the paper and accused it of having obtained the privileged materials without authorization. “The court finds that Project Veritas has met its burden of showing that the subject memoranda were obtained by irregular means, if not both irregular and improper means,” State Supreme Court Justice Charles D. Wood in Westchester County said in his ruling ( pdf) dated Dec.23. Wood upheld his earlier order in November that blocked the newspaper from further publishing the memos. He also ordered The New York Times to return the memos to Project Veritas, including the physical copies. The paper must destroy “all copies of the memos it has, including removing them ‘from the internet,’” and retrieve all copies of the memos that it had provided to third parties. Furthermore, The New York Times must confirm its compliance within 10 days. Wood told Project Veritas to notify the court by the end of January 2022 if the newspaper does not comply and warned The New York Times of potential sanctions in such a case. Wood also ordered the paper not to use the memos, or any information obtained from them, in a separate lawsuit that Project Veritas filed against The New York Times in late October 2020.
